It won't come in a letter
neither email
nor note
although you may possess them all
It will come in the quiet
in the night
A cold sweat;
In a faded sunset
Tepid water
and a gnawing
in the pit of your stomach
Your mind will race
without really going anywhere
and blame will be portioned
neat as pie
Sugar will fail to sweeten
Salt to spice
and the voices you hear
will be inside your head
Papers will pile
Magazines unread
Meals half-eaten
And Bells will toll
without mercy
Your smile will
never be the same
Your hugs, cold
lacking the vigor
of a future
Realization
always
leaves
the
light
on
6 comments:
How true...
With pain comes realization...
Yes, especially when the realization comes after someone has died.
The last stanza is wonderful.
Someone died in the story?
Jen, these intermission chapters are not part of the story. This poem reflects the attitude of someone who committed suicide and is speaking from the grave toward someone left behind, someone who didn't recognize the signs in letters or notes and only realized what was happening after it was too late.
Explicit, unmistakable, these are the words that come to mind, how precisely you have established these thoughts, these perceptions, neat and natural, it is like a single breath, an exhalation. Polished and skillful, yet like the breath, not consciously, instinctively. Reminds me of Trevor in composition, the intricacies between purpose and development/conclusion, straightforward on the one hand, versatile and inventive on the other, plaited with equal strands. Expressions are intoxicating, like the lines that feature sugar and spice, and the last lines, the last lines are enduring. The heart knows loss, whatever is read or written. Poetry of the kind that makes it into handbooks. Too wowed for valid expression.
Thank you Sunshine. I was trying to express how a survivor of a suicide, one who had missed every sign and signal, might feel after the fact; and, not to state the obvious, which I suppose I'm about to do, the point was/is, that realization does not come/exist in a letter or a note, but rather in the things I've described, those moments alone when nothing is as it was.
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